In general, an air conditioner of a vehicle maintains pleasant indoor environment by maintaining indoor temperature of the vehicle at an appropriate temperature regardless of outside temperature.
The air conditioner of the vehicle includes a compressor for compressing a refrigerant, a condenser for condensing and liquefying the refrigerant compressed by the compressor, and an expansion valve for rapidly expanding the refrigerant condensed and liquefied by the condenser. An evaporator disposed to cool air blown into the vehicle in which the air conditioner is installed by using evaporation latent heat of the refrigerant while evaporating the refrigerant expanded by the expansion valve.
According to the related art, when a water cooling type condenser is applied for condensing the refrigerant by cooling, the coolant exchanges heat with the refrigerant in the condenser. However, power consumption is increased due to a temperature increase of the refrigerant at an outlet of the condenser.
Since the water cooling type condenser has larger thermal capacity of a coolant than that of the air cooling type condenser, condensation pressure thereof is low. However, the temperature difference between coolant and refrigerant is small and the temperature of the coolant is higher than that of external air, such that sub cool is difficult to be formed, thereby degrading general cooling performance of the air conditioner.
Further, the amount of condensation of the coolant in an environmentally-friendly vehicle to which a motor, an electric power component, a stack, and the like are applied decreases because the coolant cools each constituent element and flows into a condenser, thus increasing coolant temperature.
To address the above drawbacks, a need exists for a cooling pan and a radiator with large capacity, but creating narrow engine room and increasing weight and manufacturing cost of a vehicle.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the disclosure, and therefore, it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.